State Bird Provisions SF Reservations: An Apology

This dish — and other delights — have made State Bird Provisions one of the most coveted reservations in the U.S.

As many Bay Area diners know, after a brief hiatus, State Bird Provisions in San Francisco will reopen in a renovated space this weekend. The wonderfully popular and much-acclaimed restaurant began taking online reservations again on RezBook, which was acquired by OpenTable on July 31 of this year. Unfortunately, the demand for reservations was so great that we were unable to help hungry State Bird Provisions fans easily secure reservations. Further, all restaurants using the RezBook service experienced temporary outages as a result of this. The surge was, in fact, so staggering that traffic to the RezBook servers, which are separate from those of OpenTable, increased by a remarkable 1,000%, and all available State Bird Provisions reservations were claimed in under an hour, a clear testament to Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski and their talented team, who are serving some of the finest and most inventive fare in San Francisco, and, also the nation.

RezBook servers were restored in a little under an hour, thanks to our engineering group, which has been working tirelessly to address the situation. However, we would like to personally extend our deepest apologies, first to Stuart, Nicole, and the entire staff at State Bird Provisions, for not being properly prepared to meet the legions of guests anxious to dine with them in their delightful establishment. We would also like to express our very sincere apologies to State Bird Provisions fans who were let down by the inability to easily and quickly secure a reservation due to the fact that RezBook servers were briefly down. Additionally, we extend our regrets to any of our restaurants using the RezBook service that experienced outages.

This has been an unfortunate and important lesson for all of us at OpenTable, as we continue to work on integrating RezBook into the OpenTable family of products. OpenTable is built around the notion that finding and booking restaurant reservations should be simple and seamless. We very much regret that we fell short of this guiding principle under the profound demand for State Bird Provisions reservations. Rest assured, we are actively analyzing our processes to ensure we deliver the very best possible experience for all of our restaurant partners and diners going forward.

Comments

It was so disappointing to reach the confirmation screen multiple times only to find out in the end that I did not in fact get a reservation. I was on the site for 55 minutes only to be rewarded with nothing. Since I am from out of town this was a huge let down.

Ack, ya know…no food could possibly ever live up to this kind of hype. Seriously. I’m done tryin’. I’m sure it’s okay food. It’s JUST food, though, and at this point the experience will never, ever live up to the hype. Maybe someday. Maybe not. I’m so over it.

Thank you for the apology. But I’m going to SF for one week only in the beginning of November, and after desperately trying time after time and re-loading and the site timing out, I still didn’t get a reservation. I realize I am far from the only person this happened to, but my options for going there are very limited, as I live on the other side of the country. Thanks for the apology, though.

Beyond disappointing. I tried ( from Singapore) prior to our 2 week SF stay in July. So I was not going to let this reservation slip by again for our November 23-26 stay. I set my alarm clock and checked back diligently. I kept getting nothing then when I got through it went to December 21st at 10pm. What? And my parents were flying in from Singapore to try this restaurant! I’m quite over it.

Events

Caroline Potter is the Chief Dining Officer for OpenTable, Inc. She’s a dining trend-spotter and an OpenTable VIP, who dines out more than she eats in and has accrued more than 10,000 Dining Rewards points. Caroline started working in restaurants as a teen and she’s since tackled every front-of-the-house job, from bartender and hostess to runner and server. She trained as a chef at Manhattan’s prestigious French Culinary Institute, cooking at L’Ecole. In addition to her role at OpenTable, she has written about food from farm to table for New York City’s famed Greenmarket and Edible Brooklyn and Edible East End magazines. Caroline is also a Certified Master Gardener.